Tuesday, January 20, 2009

TWD - Berry Surprise Cake

If you're here looking for a Berry Surprise Cake, I'm afraid you've stopped at the wrong blog. Surprise! I have no berries and I have no cake. I do, however, have my own adulterated version of Dorie's recipe on pages 273-275 (that's not a typo - the recipe took an entire 3 pages without a photo) of Baking: From My Home to Yours. You can also find the recipe on Mary Ann's blog "Meet Me in the Kitchen".

Dorie explains that her inspiration for this cake comes from a treat from her childhood called charlotte russe. Specifically the charlotte russe served in New York City bakeries that consisted of sponge cake, fruit or jam, and whipped cream. The treat was served in a cardboard cylinder with a round of cardboard on the bottom that you pushed up as you ate. Here's a link to a photo.

I knew from the get go that I wouldn't be using berries in this recipe because they are out of season. Even the frozen ones taste tart to me. I quickly decided on frozen mangoes and swapped out the Chambord used in the soaking syrup for Peach Schnapps. I was also strangely intrigued by the concept of cake as "street food" and after a few days mulling over the situation, I thought that I could make cupcakes in my king size baking pan and use tulip muffin wrappers so they would be portable. One problem - I can't find tulip muffin wrappers locally and to have them shipped by Tuesday would cost a fortune. I decided to give it a go with the regular muffin liners but that didn't work out so well ...

My cupcakes collapsed and while I could still dig out the cake with spoon and eat my concoction "street food style", it just wasn't what I wanted. I wanted the smooth sided tulip cups and nothing else would do! Late Saturday night I decided to try and make my own tulip cups out of parchment paper. To my surprise and delight - it worked! Now they are not nearly as perfectly pretty as the ones you can buy, but I think they suited my purposes!

The second time around, I paid closer attention to my eggs and I used superfine baker's sugar instead of regular sugar. I'm not sure if either change made a difference but I ended up with five beautiful king size genoise cupcakes! Here are some photos of the assembly process.

I love how these turned out! They taste fabulous and my mind is spinning with possibilities. How great would these be filled with ice cream at a kid's birthday party? Have I mentioned they're portable? And adorable. Check it out ...

My son could not squeeze one of my creations into his regularly scheduled diet of chicken nuggets and ketchup, but my official taste tester took one for a test drive and gave it a thumbs up. The wrapper really stayed together even while digging around with a spoon. I wanted to tape the loose ends together but ... uh ... nothing sticks to parchment paper ... the ribbon's cuter anyway! Here are a couple more photos of the cake unwrapped and cut in half.

Please check out the rest of TWD group to see how they handled this weeks challenge.

Tuesdays with Dorie

Daring Kitchen

Only Creative Opportunities

Frank Bielec, of TLC's Trading Spaces once said something along the lines of "There are no mistakes - only creative opportunities." Those words have stuck with me for many years and trust me, between the cooking, the crafting, and the child rearing, I have plenty of "creative opportunities!"